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As a mom who likes the unschool process, my 3.5 yr old has been increasingly frustrated by his inability to read.
our steiner influence has encouraged us to 'leave it go' and teach him to become comfortable with his frustration, and simply introduce reading slowly until he "unlocks the code" but they do have a pedagogy for 6-9 yr olds where they set them up to do so.
i don't have access to that pedagogy right now, or I would use it.
a friend of mine is using montessori method -- and that's been really quite good for her daughter (same age as DS -- just 3 days older) and I have some good starter resources from her.
Do any of you have any resources that you particularly enjoyed or that were fun for your kids?
I have no doubt the kid will be literate by his 4th birthday -- and I'm in no hurry -- but he's frustrated and I think games/getting him rolling will help alleviate the frustration and get the results that he wants -- the ability to read.
Thanks,
I couldn't disagree more with the Steinerites (and this attitude would make me take more than a second look at their methods). I was champing at the bit at around your son's age, so my mother taught me simple phonics as she read to me. It clearly worked; I have a lifetime love of reading and learning to show for it. I'm willing to bet he "unlocks the code" with dazzling speed.
Things that I think helped my daughter learn to read:
- books with a lot of repetitive, easy words, such as My Car by Byron Barton, Daddy Makes the Best Spaghetti by A. Hines, The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Find simple books that he really loves and read them often. My daughter memorized books like these and would "read" them to me before she could actually read - but she learned to follow along with the words as she "read" them to me. Books with visual clues to the text are great, too.
- Books that have lots of busy pictures that are labeled, such as the Richard Scarry book and books that show scenes of daily life with things labeled. My daughter used to pore over these pictures.
- listening to audio books and following along in a print book when she wanted to. She's loved listening to audio books since about age 2. The Frog and Toad Collection would be age-appropriate for your son, and easy to follow along with.
AmeliaJane
3-3-12, 10:42pm
The Elephant and Piggie series by Mo Willems is another "easy reader" series with a bit of humor to it. But my niece who is currently learning to read adores "Interrupting Chicken" and loves picking out words, and that is not a particularly easy reader at all. So you never know what will click...
I couldn't disagree more with the Steinerites (and this attitude would make me take more than a second look at their methods). I was champing at the bit at around your son's age, so my mother taught me simple phonics as she read to me. It clearly worked; I have a lifetime love of reading and learning to show for it. I'm willing to bet he "unlocks the code" with dazzling speed.
Phonics here, too! My mother taught me to read before I entered kindergarten.
And no one has yet mentioned the Dr. Seuss books!
The public library should have a range of readers, books with a controlled vocabulary intended for kids to read themselves. Readers are graduated in difficulty from low to high. These are not to be confused with picture books.
Have a librarian help you find the lowest level reader and start with words used in those books. I'm assuming that he knows the alphabet if you are talking about ready to read. Does he know the sounds that letters make? That's the next step. Sounding out syllables, then words, come next. Then reading.
But continue to read to him picture books and books that use non-reader vocabulary because that will build his vocabulary and besides, the readers can be pretty damn boring with their limited vocab. You want to keep him interested in books and if he likes words he'll want to experience a range of books.
Phonics here, too! My mother taught me to read before I entered kindergarten.
+1 on the old school phonics approach. Worked for me when I was a kid, worked great for my daughter as well.
That, and constantly sitting down and reading with your child.
I say Dr Seuss and if she is frustrated you can start anytime on 100 easy lessons to teach your child to read. I really wouldn't before 4 - 4 1/2 so she does not get frustrated. Making letters in tactile ways is really good at this age. So in sand, with clay, alphabet puzzles, fuzzy fabric letters on cards, etc.
You can teach her a few words and then as you read just ask if she sees a 'the' on the page. If she can't find words like that then she is probably not ready. You can have her find letters in books that are few words on a page and large printing. There are lots of alphabet books out there.
When my son was that age, he also would memorize books on the first reading and 'read' them back to us. We weren't sure if he was memorizing them or actually reading them. He knew his letters and the sounds they made (thank you Kermit!) so what I did was write a couple of simple stories using the first basic words lists in learning phonics. We took a few words and walked through sounding them out together then I told him to read the story to me without first reading to him. He took it slowly but sure enough he was reading it. So after that we just went on with learning to read the phonics way. There is a point, as you are teaching them, that they just seem to leap on ahead and 'get it'.
I used the same stories to teach my daughter in her turn.
I have found that most kids are ready to start learning by 4 or 5. Don't wait for kindergarten. If your son is ready to read, don't let this chance pass by. I'm guessing he watches sesame street and knows his letters and their sounds. Great! Build on that. One thing you could do is make picture cards together. You know, find a picture of a ball, or draw one and write underneath it "BALL" and sound it out together. then make a color card (does he know his colors?) red, and write the word "RED" under it. sound those out. Now, write the sentence "The Ball is Red" You could even leave out 'the' if it's too confusing now. If he knows his letters and sounds, then he can read that sentence. Ball is red. (Build on it.) Big ball is red. Pat has a big red ball.
I think it's the most fun when the little guys realize they actually can read.
Zoe Girl is right, my advice is ahead of the game for a 3 year old. Are you doing all of the things that she mentioned? Waiting until he is 6 is ridiculous IF he is chomping at the bit to read. Otherwise, it is fine.
4 year old read? Define "reading" at 4 years old. You are in early childhood, aren't you Zoe?
loosechickens
3-3-12, 11:46pm
I learned to read when I was three years old, just by learning the alphabet and what sounds the letters made, then being encouraged to puzzle out how those letters were arranged in words...... and all of a sudden my mother and preschool teacher were surprised by me sitting down with a book and reading it with little effort........by kindergarten, I was going to school, carrying my Honeybunch and Bobbsey Twins books with me, and have been a lifelong reader ever since.
I taught my son to read at age four the same way, and HE taught his younger sister, by playing "school" with her, so that by the time I sat down with her to start helping her sound out letters into words, she astonished me by already having learned it herself.
Kids just naturally want to "crack codes", so IMHO, if you just give them some tools in helping them learn the letters and the general sounds those letters make, and help them begin to puzzle out words using those phonetic sounds, they will go great guns on their own and begin solving every "word puzzle" they can find, from reading billboards, road signs, etc., right to all of a sudden learning how to understand the words you adults are spelling between you to hide what you're saying from them.......
To me, it was very important to teach my kids to read and to love reading BEFORE they started school, because I didn't want any possibility of the joy of reading to be tarnished, as sometimes happens in a school environment, where the class often muddles along at the speed of understanding of the slowest, and reading somehow becomes "work" instead of a fascination and a path to freedom.
That, and constantly sitting down and reading with your child.
Absolutely! Although that can have a interesting result - by the time I was in second grade, I read so well and so quickly on my own (I was reading the Little House and Black Stallion books by myself) that I didn't want to have anything more to do with my mother reading aloud as she did to my younger (by 20 months) brother and I. She read too slowly! So she'd read to him and I was reading by myself in my room!
4 year old read? Define "reading" at 4 years old. You are in early childhood, aren't you Zoe?
Sure, plenty of 4 year old read which means: they recognize words, they can pronounce the words, they know the meaning, and they can relate the meaning to other words in the sentence.
I was reading--sounding out words--by four. I read Gone with the Wind when I was home for two weeks with the mumps at seven. ("I like big books and I cannot lie." :moon:) I have relatives who are still twitting me about that. It's clear to me that Zoebird's son is ready and willing to read.
Four must be a common age for eager young readers to crack the code, now that I think of it. A good friend and library buddy of mine was also reading by then.
we do read to him. it's so funny how everyone tells us to do that. LOL if he had his way, we would do nothing but read, play blocks and go to the beach/park every day. unfortunately, there are also other things that we need to do -- like work, make food, etc.
back when he was about 12 months old, he wanted more and more reading. our parenting coach helped us by saying that we could do two activities: 1. contain the reading to special times; and 2. provide times (which is to say unlimited access to) his books. we read to him about 1.5 hours a day in two 45 minute periods, though sometimes those periods go up to an hour, and at the library -- when his father takes him there on Thursdays -- they do an additional hour of reading on that day, plus story time with the librarian (30 minutes).
he also then spends some down time during the day with his books. he would often wake up before us -- or during DH's morning time to himself -- and so we got into the habit of putting a book and an apple (or other fruit) on the end of the bed for him. he would wake, go to toilet, and then sit and read his book and have an apple. This usually happens about 4 days a week right now. he'll sit in bed and read his book and eat his apple for a good hour or so before waking us. it's super-helpful on our weekends!
when he was 6 months old, i got some flash cards. I know it seems silly, but i saw no difference between those board books with one word/letter/picture per page and using these flash cards, so i got the cards. I found them much easier to use, carry around, etc -- and we would do 3 or 4 words at a time and he spent a lot of time with those cards. i then started doing matching games, word games, and a game i called "easter eggs" which was that I would hide cards around the room and say "Find the F F FFFFFF FISH!" and he would go and look for the card. It always was F-Fish side up, and picture side down, and so he definitely got that. He was doing that around 13 months.
he has been working out small words -- for example, he doesn't understand articles. he can pick out the word "the" and 'a" and so on -- but he doesn't understand how those are "words" becuse they don't identify something in and of themselves. "ball" is a word, but "the" is not a word.
I can see how he would be confused. the is an article, not an object, so we have been telling him that it's about emphasis. I believe he's trying to understand language -- starting at letters and words and reading, and moving into grammatical structures.
he also has a very, very wide spoken vocabulary because his father and i do. when DH picked him up from kindy last week, he was rather surprised to hear DS express to her that an aspect of that day's story seemed hyperbolic. she then asked him what he meant, and he expressed that it seems clear to him that, in fact, a small lawn mower would not harm a large sheep, and that surely the sheep -- no matter how "dim," or lacking in intelligence -- would move out of the way while the boy mowed the lawn. Thus, the story was hyperbolic in that it seemed to emphasize the danger to the sheep, where there was no danger, as a poor attempt to heighten the drama. So, it was actually ineffective and he was unable to suspend his belief. In short, he concluded "the second act of the story was "sagging."
You must understand that this language is common in our household. We read *a lot* of stories, and we -- being who we are DH and I -- talk about whether or not the story is effective or not. And, we talk about how, motifs, and genres. Of course, DS asks many questions about this, and so we "unpack" it for him, and now the fellow is media savvy.
while we read, we often ask "what do you think marcus is going to do next?" before turning the page. DS will look at the clues in the story -- in both words and pictures -- to discern what may happen next. and, when things don't go the way we expect, we look again -- was this or that 'set up' effectively in the story?
right now, his favorite books are these "puzzle books" where not only are they identifying words (since we do phonetic-styled reading, identifying letters and dyads, and so on), but also working on problem solving, logic puzzles and basic mathematics. there's also simple codes -- you have to 'crack' codes to then look for the right object in the picture, which then sets up the story on the next page. they're amazingly complex (and fun) books. this is usually the first "half" of our reading time.
DS has also taken a liking to a series of "classics" in the library -- all made into picture books. he's currently obsessed with Beowulf. We have explained how Beowulf is a kenning by talking about the origin of the word itself. It's Norse, which is a language no longer spoken, and where it comes from (geography) and how it impacts english. In addition, beowulf is two words put together -- bee wolf, which means "bear" because bears like honey. And, we then create other kennings as a matter of fun. And, this also lead to conversations about shape-shifting (not sure how, but it was interesting), and so now "beo" is used for all kinds of things that refer to shape-shifting. DS also associates the word with "bee" (origins/meanings), and he considers it a "making word" meaning that it refers not just to bees as they are, but what bees DO, and therefore 'beo' could also mean "busy" or "active" and also "creative" and "sweet." while this is stretching the word to it's limits, it's certainly showing a facility with language.
DS has also been teaching himself german. How?
He started by meeting german girls. one of his early sitters here is german. she's back in germany now, and they chat on skype. he told her that he wants to learn german, and so she speaks to him in german exclusively. one of our neighbors is also german, and so he speaks to her exclusively in german, which usually involves conversations about mustaches because he likes the term "schnurrbart." she steers the conversation toward the Lorax (dr suess) because he has "eine spektakuläre schnurrbart!" and DS also likes to exclaim this when he sees his grandfather (who has a mustache) and any person with one.
Steiner starts spoken language german in year one, but we are looking into german books in the library as well -- though they have been difficult to find. I thought if I could find german translations of books we already have (favorites like curious george), then he might do quite well. DH also knows a very little bit of german (he studied german in high school and college and has been to germany several times), so he can also support DS's interest in german.
With our neighbors, I think he'll be fluent in no time at all -- and he has no interest in other language, except also maori, which he considers "very special" and "will only learn it from a person with a chin" (which refers to the ceremonial tattoos on the chin). So far, anyone who is pakeha (non-maori or 'other') or he doesn't consider a "real maori person" isn't allowed to teach it, or rather, he suspects that they don't know what they are talking about. This may or may not be true, but even so the kid is funny about it.
A friend of mine gave me a few leads on some montessori stuff that can help me create some games that he will enjoy -- something where I can guide it a bit and then he can play on his own as much as he wants and become facile with letters, phonics, dyads, and so on. . . and then unlock the code of reading on his own from there.
And of course, support his german "habit." LOL
He's a funny kid.
Sure, plenty of 4 year old read which means: they recognize words, they can pronounce the words, they know the meaning, and they can relate the meaning to other words in the sentence.
Exactly! When we first suspected our son was learning to read was when he was about 20 months old. My mom was visiting and had taken him for a walk. As they walked he saw a truck with the work Toyota in big letters on the tailgate. He pointed and read it. My mom was amazed but said naw he isn't reading it, he just recognized the word. Well, duh! :~)
Originally posted by Tradd.
And no one has yet mentioned the Dr. Seuss books!The first recommendation I thought of.
He may be bored by the most repetitive of kiddie books though. I was. Your son might prefer simple stories about subjects he's interested in. A family friend of ours despaired of their son ever learning to read until he discovered the newspaper was full of sports information. All of a sudden, he couldn't learn fast enough.
Sure, plenty of 4 year old read which means: they recognize words, they can pronounce the words, they know the meaning, and they can relate the meaning to other words in the sentence.
Yes of course. But I was looking for a more specific definition in this case, at least from Zoe's point of view, just so I could understand the situation a bit more. My 3 year old grandson can recognize all letters of the alphabet, so I understand that he is 'reading' but I was wondering what Zoebird meant. I mean, does she mean be able to pick up a simple book and just read it independently?
i suspect he will be able to read a book independently -- at least in part -- by his 4th birthday.
in addition to some of the activity that i introduced yesterday (which involves letters and sounds) a friend of mine recommended an online program, which is great when DH and I need to work (often together). He loves the program, and it's not too flashy and/or annoying. He's really enjoying working with it, though we keep it to 1/2 hr and then he works in other ways (mostly working on his letters -- trying to write them and create words).
... My 3 year old grandson can recognize all letters of the alphabet, so I understand that he is 'reading' ...
I probably wouldn't call that reading, at least, if it doesn't go beyond that.
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